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MCCAIN THE HAWK.
Yesterday, it seemed, for a bit, that someone on McCain's staff had plagiarized his eloquent statement on the horrors of war from a speech Admiral Timothy Ziemer gave in 1996. Not so. Turned out McCain was using those lines in 1995. So, since 1995, he's been saying, "I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue."
Which puts us in one of these odd situations where the reality is more damning, but less damaging, than the purported scandal. Between 1995 and 2008, McCain has advocated full-scale war in Kosovo, North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. He has repeatedly sought to ratchet up tensions with Russia and China, and has advisers who've called for air strikes on Syria. And those are only the instance I can remember offhand. His horror of war has led him to advocate no fewer than four full-scale wars in the past decade or so. And his recognition of its dangers has spurred him towards an aggressive, threatening stance against two of the largest, most powerful countries on earth. This, of course, will not be a scandal. Yet how much the better if McCain had copied true sentiments about his aversion to war, rather than simply lied to cover up his proclivity towards militarism?
Update: For more along these lines, see Spackerman, who also reminds me that though McCain we tend to bring up McCain's invocation of a 100-year occupation of Iraq, McCain has also mentioned his comfort with a 1,000-year occupation of Iraq. But Im sure he'd detest every second of it. All 3.1556926 × 1010 of them.
COMMENTS (8)
So this character's a flip-flopper of the first water.
[Kerry as a piker by comparison.]
Turn the tables and do a LO-ong series of graphic befores and afters...alla time until November.
Man's an original shapeshifter.
Might begin with the McCain-Feingold fellowship.
Posted by: has_te | March 28, 2008 2:19 PM
I'm impressed with the math. Nice work!
Posted by: Scott | March 28, 2008 3:04 PM
I want to thank you for committing to use this image as often as you possibly can. It's one of those things that, no matter how many times I look at, still manages to make me actually laugh out loud. I wish everything ever said about John McCain was prefaced by it. Not even really for political reasons. Just for the total weirdness. The world needs more goofy face screen caps.
Posted by: Drew | March 28, 2008 4:18 PM
Here's a question I'd like to see McCain asked: are there any wars in American history you think we shouldn't have entered?
Posted by: matt | March 29, 2008 1:45 PM
Let's just focus on the McCain advocated "Surge" strategy.
According to McCain, all we needed to do was add a few more boots outside the Green Zone and .... VOILA! The spontaneous appearance of Jeffersonian democrats would occur, complete with the flowers they forgot to shower our troops with when we first occupied the country.
Guess he didn't see the Shia-on-Shia feud on the horizon. The Brits did, and that's why they are folding their tent. So now it is a proxy war of "our Shias" against "Iran's Shias." I've seen this movie before: "our guys" don't stand a chance!
Posted by: Odquest | March 29, 2008 2:45 PM
Note how Ezra Klein unethically begins his story:
"it seemed, for a bit, that someone on McCain's staff had plagiarized his eloquent statement on the horrors of war from a speech Admiral Timothy Ziemer gave in 1996."
But he doesn't tell you that Thinkprogress corrected its baseless claim, after proving McCain had used the phrase before the admiral.
Shame on Ezra, Think Progress, the New Republic (remember that one?) for being dishonest.
Posted by: Andrew | March 29, 2008 8:34 PM
Re: Andrew's bizarre accusation that Ezra was unethical and dishonest:
Ezra tells us that the accusation that McCain plagerized Ziemer's speech was false, and he tells us why we know it is false: McCain used the lines in question before Ziemer used them. Even the sentence Andrew quotes tells us that it "yesterday, it seemed" that McCain had plagerized, making it clear that it no longer seems that way today. So Andrew either has severe difficulties with basic English comprehension, or he was being unethical and dishonest when he implied that Ezra was propagating a false accusation of plagerism against McCain.
Posted by: Kenneth Almquist | March 30, 2008 1:04 PM
Nice try. It only 'seemed' that plagerism had occurred to anyone who failed to fact-check or ask McCain for comment.
Ezra then spins this into the Dan Rather 'the truth is worse than the fraud' ploy.
When you can't simply own up that you completely blew it, but have to pile horsebleep over your previous error, you lose all credibility.
Unless you treat your blog as a serious business, it will never be taken seriously.
Posted by: harkin | March 31, 2008 12:10 AM